Let there be photons

Kind of like Mars...      (Image by FrankFortePhoto)

When you’re talking light, you’re talking photons.  And when you’re talking photons, you could be talking photonic propulsion.

Daily Mail reports that photonic propulsion may allow for humans to reach Mars in just three days.  Replacing the usual heavy fuel supply with “an array of lasers” would enable spacecraft to “accelerate for longer and reach higher speeds.”

Physicists are currently working on laser technology for “extremely small probes.”

Someday, however, this technology might also be applicable to astronomical goals such as space travel.

Professor Phillip Lubin of the Directed Energy Interstellar Precursors Program at the University of California Santa Barbara explains that relativistic speeds (significantly proportional to the speed of light) have already been routinely reached within laboratories.  He feels that photonic propulsion technology will be able to transfer this success to macroscopic levels in “things like aircraft, cars, spacecraft.”

Imagine that!  Someday weekend flights to Mars might be on most people’s bucket lists.  Until then, we’ll have to settle for junkets to Las Vegas.

Resources

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3454486/Could-travel-Mars-just-THREE-days-Nasa-s-photonic-propulsion-uses-light-lasers-produce-thrust.html 

Copyright February 23, 2016 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved